One for the future?

I still believe all I said in the Orange Pi post but for anyone out there who actually is working on ports to other variants of the ARM CPU this might be of interest (2.7GHz Snapdragon processor):

http://www.inforcecomputing.com/products/single-board-computers-sbc/qualcomm-snapdragon-805-inforce-6540-sbc-108?scroll=learnmore

I have been digging around some old posts on this forum and the Qualcomm ARM chips are mentioned in passing quite a lot but never taken anywhere really.

This has made me wonder:

What are the steps involved in porting RISC OS?

Does anyone have a good handle on this?

Is there the equivalent body of information that would equate to a “Porting for Dummies”?

Or is this sort of thing reserved to people with years of actual tinkering experience?

Apologies if these are stupid questions.

Glen I have one of these boards if you would like to attempt a port let me know, I will dig it out for you.

What are the steps involved in porting RISC OS?

How to port RISC OS to new hardware

Does anyone have a good handle on this?

There are a few of us around who have been involved in multiple RISC OS porting efforts – both starting them and helping out with ports started by others.

Or is this sort of thing reserved to people with years of actual tinkering experience?

When I started the OMAP3 port I knew nothing about the OMAP3, nothing about post-ARMv5 ARM, and I don’t think I’d read a single line of the OS source code.

However I did have plenty of years of RISC OS + ARM experience to draw on, along with some professional experience with large porting jobs (“take game engine X which you’ve never seen before and port it to run on platform Y”).

So as long as you have good general RISC OS + ARM programming knowledge and aren’t phased by large technical documents or large code bases you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

Excellent info thanks Jeffrey!

Glen I have one of these boards if you would like to attempt a port let me know, I will dig it out for you

I do intend to do so but it will likely take me ages and the board will probably sit on a shelf unloved for a bit…I wouldn’t want to deprive you of your board so will get my own at some point!

(I am building a suite of computers at home because I no longer have access to fancy hardware through work…basically starting from zero so it might take a bit if time to get my setup finished…not least because I also have Ethernet cables to run, walls to replaster and a desk to renovate as part of the project!)

Glen I have one of these boards if you would like to attempt a port let me know, I will dig it out for you

Do you know if it will fit into one of these cases (Travla T290):

http://www.travla.com/business/index.php?id_product=95&controller=product